


Tis the Season

by Chash



Series: Helping Hands [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 17:22:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12988815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: Clarke gave Bellamy one truly great gift in their relationship. Unfortunately, it was right at the start of their relationship, which means holidays can be kind of stressful. She's never going to top that.





	Tis the Season

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for [ineedyouractionfiguretostop](http://ineedyouractionfiguretostop.tumblr.com/)

The problem, Clarke has found, with giving Bellamy presents is that she gave him what will probably always be the best present she’s ever given him the year she gave him the coupon booklet, and now every subsequent birthday party and Christmas suffers by comparison. And it’s not like she hasn’t gotten him plenty of other gifts that he’s liked, but it’s hard to beat the item that actually got them together. And he’s always been hard to shop for, especially big things.

“So, fuck Christmas,” she concludes, to Raven.

“Can you get him another sex book? Maybe level up to like the  _Kama Sutra_  or something. You know, just to keep on theme.”

“It’s not like I don’t have good things to get him. But how weird is it that I’m never going to bet a two-dollar booklet that I bought without even realizing what I was buying?”

“You know you don’t actually have to top yourself every time you give someone a present, right? Like, before you guys were dating you just bought him booze.”

“I can’t just  _buy him booze_ , he’s my boyfriend.”

“And you can’t talk to him because you want it to be a surprise, or you’re just a stubborn asshole?”

“Why pick?” she mutters. “Bellamy’s  _good_  at presents. Every time he buys me something it’s thoughtful and amazing and exactly what I wanted, and every time I buy him something it’s–useful.”

“Nothing wrong with a little practicality. And I know I’m not going to be the first person to tell you this, but your boyfriend loves you and he probably likes the gifts you get him. He knows what you’re like.”

“I know.” She sighs. “I just–sometimes I wish the stuff I got for him was as good as the stuff he got for me.”

“Come on, you know that’s not how it works. He’s not grading you on Christmas presents.”

“Still.”

“Still. Get him really nice booze.”

“Obviously I’m getting him really nice booze,” she says. “But–something else too.”

“Just tell him you love him, he likes that.”

“Not really a present. Maybe I’ll get him some stuff for his desk at work. But, you know. Fun stuff.”

Raven snorts. “Wow, you sounded so enthusiastic about that. Seriously, you’re going to be fine.”

“I know,” she says. “But I want to be great.”

“You know you weren’t this bad last year, right?”

“I think he’s going to propose,” Clarke admits. It feels a little strange even just saying the words aloud, but–she really  _does_  think that. He’s been acting a little strange lately, not quite cagey, just–off. But not in a way that makes her worry he’s planning to dump her or anything.

They had a conversation about it back in October, too, just in general terms, Bellamy asking if she wanted to get married someday, and they concluded that she did, and he did too, and they probably would do that, eventually.

It wasn’t the most romantic conversation ever, but it was good to get it out of the way and Clarke’s been braced, ever since, for him to propose to her. Christmas seems like a plausible time for it to happen.

“Shit,” says Raven. “Really?”

“I’m not  _sure_ ,” she hedges. “But it seems like the kind of thing he’d do, right? It’s romantic.”

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” Raven admits. “Which is good for you.”

“How?”

You can’t possibly beat that, so you’re off the hook. Get him something nice, cry and say yes when he proposes, and boom. You’re done.“

“Or I could spend the month freaking out about finding him something else.”

“Or that,” says Raven. “Knock yourself out.”

*

The problem with sex-based gifts, which are theoretically a good idea, is that Clarke generally doesn’t need a holiday as an excuse to get that kind of thing. She and Bellamy tend to be good at just having awesome sex all by themselves, and they’ll try things when they want to try them.

Plus, sex is awesome and important and everything, but she would feel a little weird if Christmas rolled around and he gave her an engagement ring and she bought him nipple clamps or something. He’d probably like them, enjoy them, and value them as a present, but it would just feel like she was in an entirely different genre of holiday.

“Fuck,” she mutters, and puts her head down on the table.

“You okay?” Bellamy asks. He’s working on grading in the other room, but he probably heard the thud.

“I’m good!”

“Fuck, is it dinner time? Did I forget to cook?”

She has to smile. “We’re ordering takeout, remember? So you don’t have to stop grading.”

“That seemed like a good idea before I really wanted a fucking break.” She hears him come in, and he drops a kiss on the top of her head. “What’s wrong? Something happen?”

“Just stressing. You know me.”

“Can I help?”

One of her options is to just ask him if he’s planning to propose, which would at least clear up some of her anxiety, but that feels unfair. If he wanted her to know about the proposal, he just would have told her.

“Want to have sex before we order dinner?” she asks instead, and he makes a show of thinking it over for all of a second.

“Yeah, I could live with that,” he says, and it’s not like it solves her problem, but she really does feel a lot better after.

*

If Clarke were a different kind of person, she’d probably be looking for the ring. From what she can tell from pop culture, that’s something people do. But she’s not sure how her life changes, if she knows for sure. She has to buy him a present, and she’d like it to be a good one. The fact that his present to her may or may not include a wedding ring doesn’t matter, and if he wants it to be a surprise, she should respect that. The only reason it really matters is that she wants to make sure she has something comparably good, honestly.

Which is how she ends up googling  _engagement rings for men_ , just out of idle curiosity. The best defense is a good offense, right? If Bellamy  _does_  propose, she’ll have her ring ready as a counter offer, and if he doesn’t propose, she can do it first. At minimum, she’s as romantic as he is, with an outside chance of being  _more_  romantic, if he doesn’t end up proposing himself.

 **Me** : Is being competitive a good reason to ask someone to marry you?

 **Wells** : I think you have the wrong number.

 **Me** : You know it’s me, Wells

 **Wells** : The statement stands  
Seriously I don’t even know what you’re asking me  
You want to propose to Bellamy?

 **Me** : I think he’s going to propose to me  
For Christmas, probably  
So I want to plan on counter-proposing  
Because otherwise I have no idea what to get him

 **Wells** : You know me  
You know I don’t say this often  
But honestly  
What the fuck, Clarke

 **Me** : So you think it’s a bad idea

 **Wells** : Do you want to marry him?  
Like, would you be proposing if you didn’t think he was?

 **Me** : I might not have thought of it  
But yeah, of course I want to marry him

 **Wells** : I would suggest maybe presenting it as just wanting to marry him  
Leave out the complicated mind games

 **Me** : I think he likes the complicated mind games

 **Wells** : Okay  
Your kink is not my kink and that’s okay  
Just tell me if/when you get engaged  
I need no other details

 **Me** : Thanks for the advice  
Merry Christmas

 **Wells** : Good luck with your weird spite engagement  
You guys are definitely prefect for each other

*

If Bellamy looks into her search history at any point in the weeks leading up to Christmas, he will know exactly what he’s getting, between the  _engagement rings for men_  searches and the  _how to tell what someone’s ring size is without asking_  searches. But as far as she can tell, Bellamy isn’t at all stressed about the holiday and is not having some quiet, internal, competition-fueled meltdown about whether or not he’s gotten her a good enough present.

Like some kind of  _asshole_.

They tend to have fairly lowkey Christmases, staying at home, just the two of them. Octavia goes to Lincoln’s family, and her mother usually comes to visit either the weekend before or the weekend after, depending on her schedule at the hospital, and that’s how Clarke likes it. Even before they started dating, she liked it, which is another one of those things that is, in retrospect, one of the reasons they started dating in the first place.

And why she’s going to propose to him. Somehow.

The problem is, if Bellamy got her a ring, he hasn’t obviously put it under the tree, and he  _has_  put other things under the tree, which means he’s either hiding it in something else, or he’s hiding it somewhere else, or he hasn’t actually gotten her a ring and he’s not going to propose and she’s been tying herself in knots for absolutely no reason for weeks. She can’t  _wait_  for Christmas to be over. She and Bellamy are going to have such a good laugh over this mess.

She got him a Lego set recreating the Venice skyline to put on his desk, and she opens that up and puts the ring inside it, so she can get it under the tree without raising suspicions. So far, they’re both doing a stellar job at appearing to not be proposing this Christmas, and if he doesn’t, she could maybe even get the ring out of the box before he saw it and act like this never happened.

But then she wouldn’t be engaged to him so, really, fuck that.

They sleep in on Christmas day, and Bellamy makes coffee and breakfast before they make it over to the tree. They set a budget every year, which Clarke completely ignored, but in her defense, rings are  _expensive_. And the rest of her stuff was under a hundred bucks, so, whatever.

“You’re pretty stressed out for Christmas morning,” Bellamy says, nudging her shoulder as he settles next to her on the floor. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. Just–wondering what you got me.”

“So you want to open the first present, huh?”

“That’s not what I meant,” she says. He just looks at her for a moment, and she caves. “But if you’re offering–”

“You can go first,” he says, and grabs a brightly wrapped package for her.

With only two of them, they get through gifts fast, and Bellamy’s down to his last one, the Lego set, before Clarke is, with no ring and no proposal in sight.

So that’s awkward.

“This one’s me, right?” he asks, holding it up.

“Yeah.” If he was going to propose, he’d do it first, right? He wouldn’t be saving it for the end for dramatic effect.

Fuck, he’s Bellamy, of course he would.

“Are you planning to do anything special?” she blurts out.

“With the present?”

“No, with–Christmas.”

He looks down at the present, swallows. “Uh–maybe?”

“I knew it!” she says, and immediately feels awful about it. “Sorry, I just–if you want to do a big dramatic speech, you should maybe do it before you open that.”

“I should?”

“Just if you want to–yeah.”

He nods once, puts the package aside slowly, and then reaches into his pocket. “I couldn’t decide if you figured it out or not.”

“Neither could I, if it helps.”

“Just wanted to check?” he teases, and scoots next to her. “Should I not do this? Do you not want–”

She leans in and kisses him, just for a second. “I’ve been waiting all morning,” she tells him, and he laughs.

“Okay, well–I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I want to marry you. So–” The ring is perfect, no stone because she told him at some point that she doesn’t like rings with stones on them, and apparently he listened. “Will you marry me?”

“Of course,” she says, laughing, and kisses him and slides the ring on before she adds, “That was it?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I’d known your speech was that short, I wouldn’t have felt bad stealing your thunder.”

He frowns. “Stealing my thunder?”

“Open your present.”

He does it, smiles at the site of the Lego set, but with a certain kind of bemusement. “For my desk?”

“Yeah. Open the box.”

He does, and the ring falls out first, right into his hand.

“I might have had a minor crisis about figuring out a good enough present for you,” she says. “I’m never going to top the coupon book  _and_  I thought you were going to propose! So I just figured if we both proposed, everyone got a good present.”

He laughs and leans in to kiss her again. “So, you were afraid if I proposed, I’d win Christmas?”

“I couldn’t come up with anything that good!” she says, but she’s laughing too. “I just didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

“You’re going to  _marry me_ ,” he says. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“But I did, so–put on the ring, Blake.”

“You’re not going to ask first?”

She bumps her nose against his, and then kisses him. “I love you. Will you marry me?”

“Definitely,” he says, grinning. “Thanks for asking.”


End file.
